Our Curriculum

At Littleport Community Primary School, our children are at the heart of our curriculum. We believe in an exciting and engaging curriculum; a curriculum that is intellectually stimulating and innovative; broad and balanced; and, a curriculum that offers our children a wealth of experiences and new challenges.

Our intention:

To provide a curriculum that is both relevant to the needs of our children but that also fully explores any statutory requirements as set out by the DfE.

To provide a curriculum that is intellectually stimulating

To provide a mastery curriculum that increases understanding and plans for depth of learning

During the spring and summer terms of 2018, all staff played a vital role in a reviewing our whole school curriculum. Our aim was to ensure that our curriculum provides pupils with an excellent mix of academic and personal development; gives equal importance to core and foundation subjects; that physical wellbeing and mental wellbeing are both valued and understood and, that all children should be able to experience the feeling of accomplishment. Our curriculum design is therefore reviewed throughout the year to ensure that all our children spread their wings and fly!

What makes our curriculum special?

During our curriculum review, all staff agreed some key fundamental principles that would underpin our curriculum.

A love of our literary heritage – our English sessions are built around key texts (including classic and contemporary) to support children in developing a love of language.

Everyone can be a mathematician - maths is for everyone! We develop key skills within mathematics and apply these to problem solving tasks and in other curriculum subjects.

An Arts Education is essential to children’s wellbeing and development – we want all our children to see themselves as artists and musicians. An appreciation of the arts is vital.

Outdoor Learning all year round - we value our environment and are passionate about learning outside. We look for opportunities to learn out of doors, enriching our experiences across the curriculum.

A national and international outlook – our children love exploring the world around them – the past, the present and the future!

Physical and Mental Wellbeing – we value the whole child and want every young person to thrive.

How Our Curriculum is Organised

Here you can find our Long Term plans for this academic year. Each LTP shows you how the statutory elements of the curriculum have been organised across the whole school from Year 1 to Year 6. Each curriculum plan also includes some areas which are not statutory but we think important for pupils’ depth of understanding and wellbeing. For example, we have a whole school PSHE Long Term Plan which includes teaching Sex and Relationship Education across the whole school at an age-appropriate level.

As of September 2018, we will no longer be following a topic-based approach to our curriculum. During our review, we agreed that a topic-based approach in KS1 and KS2 was hampering us from designing a truly innovative curriculum. This was especially true in the humanities. Therefore geography and history will be taught all year – each year group will be exploring one main ‘theme’ and revisiting and deepening key concepts on a yearly basis. For example, children may encounter ‘rivers’ every year in geography but their understanding will deepen as new language is introduced and rivers investigated in a different way depending upon the ‘theme’ studied. Please see our LTPs for more information.

We are really excited about the changes to our curriculum this year and can’t wait to explore this with the children.

Subject by Subject

Here you can find information about each of our subjects; how they are organized in the Long Term throughout the school; the statutory requirements for each subject as well as progression. In many subjects, we use the Chris Quigley Milestones to help us plan progression throughout the school. However, in most cases we have adapted these to fit with our vision for the curriculum.

If you wish to find out more about the National Curriculum 2014 (the most recent change to the primary curriculum for maintained state schools) then please visit the DfE's website at this link:

Phonics is systematically taught following the Letters and Sounds programme throughout the EYFS and Key Stage 1. In Key Stage 2, where applicable, decoding skills are supported by targeted intervention linked to Letters and Sounds materials.

Mathematics

The Humanities are grouped into four subjects: geography, history, religious education and modern foreign languages. Our Long Term Plan shows you how we have organized the content (breadth) of that curriculum subject while our progression documents show you how skills in that subject progress over time.

The arts include art and design and music. Art skills in drawing and paint are taught across all year groups while classes also specialize in another media - this supports the idea of a mastery curriculum. Inspiration for art can come from artists and designers, but also from across the other curriculum areas. Children have the opportunity to develop their singing skills during our weekly singing assembly which is split between KS2 and KS1. We also offer music instrumental lessons in brass and violin for children in Years 3 and 4. They can then go on to develop this instrument further in years 5 and 6. Piano and guitar lessons are also available.

Physical and Mental Wellbeing

STEM subjects include science, technology (including Food) and computing. Where ever possible, maths skills are consolidated and reinforced through these curriculum subject areas. Computing is taught using resources from the iComputing programme and supplemented with units on E-Safety